NDP promise to improve cardiac care at Winnipeg's St. Boniface Hospital

Manitoba's NDP promised Wednesday to spend$5 million every year to improve the quality of cardiac care at St. Boniface Hospital.

NDP Leader Wab Kinewsaid the money would be used to hire more perfusionists the technicians who operate heart-bypass machines during open-heart surgery and improve cardiac research in a unit once regarded as one of the best in Canada.

"Here at St. Boniface, we have the remnants of a very strong program that is still delivering excellent care to people here in Manitoba. But we need to invest more," said Kinew, standing across the street from the Winnipeg hospital.

In 2017, the Canadian Institute for Health Information cited St. Boniface as one of the best places to go in Canada for cardiac surgery.

That reputation was greatly diminished during the COVID-19 pandemic. Now, Kinew claimed, the cardiac unit has trouble recruiting perfusionists and other staff.

The NDP leader said the cash infusion of $5 million would help improve cardiac care and enable better data collection, involving both cardiac patients in hospital and patients who've left the hospital.

That, he said, would help shed light on cardiac illness among women, which may go undiagnosed.

"These are research opportunities that will not only help improve care for you, the patient, but it'll help recruit more health-care staff to join the front lines here, because those heart researchers want to go to places where they're going to be able to do cutting-edge research," Kinew said.

• Read full coverage of the 2023 Manitoba election here

Almost every NDP announcement during this election campaign so far has involved health care.